I’m twenty years old, I’m in my third year of college and for the first time I have a fat – no – a phat crush on someone. I’m not new to dating or youknowwhat (well, not extremely new anyways..) but I’ve never felt so hopelessly into someone before. I guess you could say this is my first real crush.

The problem isn’t that he *doesn’t know I exist* because he does, we talk in class and around school. I just don’t think he’s into me. I’ve seen the girls he’s dated and I don’t think I’m his type. Also we only chill at school, we’ve run into each other at parties once or twice but were really just classmates.My brain is telling me “let him be! Find another boy! You can’t force these things!” but another part of me is ready to bend over backwards to become this boy’s type. All of the sudden I have urges to get new clothes and a haircut.

Also, I have a class with him and his recently ex girlfriend. Anytime I want to chill (…or flirt…) she comes swooping in…

Its silly. I want to either shut this whole thing down so I can concentrate on more important things (what I usually do, but this one has me hooked) or convince him that I’m actually a cool kid and move on to the next level. This secret longing bullshit is getting old. I met him a year ago! How do I move on? Or, is it wrong to change somethings about myself in order to get a dude??

I want to be a good friend and a good listener, I really do. I have a lovely, kind friend who I have known for a long time. She has some mental health issues. She is going through a very rough time and I totally want to be there for her. The career has been a nonstarter for many years; she has not worked consistently since she graduated college. Her family is not that helpful. Now her relationship is falling apart, too, and she is financially dependent on her partner.

I have listened for hours on end. So have several other mutual friends. Listening is becoming very hard:

I’ve really no idea how to sensibly start this story. I’m in my early twenties and I’ve never had a boyfriend before. In fact no one has ever been interested in me. And then I met this guy. We met on a drunken night out and while nothing but holding hands and hugging happened, he was obviously attracted to me. I didn’t really know what to think about this and it really only hit me when he asked me out a couple of days later.

Despite initially agreeing to go out, I backed out for various reasons a couple of times (some legitimate reasons, some lame excuses) because I was nervous and scared. We saw each other informally a couple of times as we’re in the same group of friends and we initially had a very high level of other communication, text, email, Facebook, all of it. I wasn’t sure what to do, how to handle the situation or how to reply to his advances. It took me a while but I am starting to really like him.

Recently we went for our first proper date (as opposed to just casually hanging out). We went for drinks and as we were ordering, he asked what I wanted, I told him, he got it for me. It didn’t seem like a big deal. However, later, through the grapevine and completely unrelated to our date, I found out he was opposed to treating women differently, for example offering women a seat etc. Our conversation level has recently dropped and I feel like he’s not giving me much back when I initiate a conversation (electronically). However, I have before gotten the impression that he had given up on this when we couldn’t see each other for a while for reasons beyond our control. This time however, I’m worried I may have offended by not insisting I get my own drinks etc. I really like him and would like to see him again but I also am really shy about this whole thing and inexperienced, which is why I took things so slow to begin with.

I couldn’t bring myself to directly say these things but I need to convey to him two things. That I am interested and that I am not one of these girls who expect their date to pay for everything. I went by the logic that if he offered, he must’ve meant it, it wasn’t anything big, like a whole meal or a theatre ticket, it was a first date and I was really nervous so it seemed easiest to just go with it!

So there’s this lady in my life. She’s a fantastic lady. I met her last summer and we connected pretty much instantly. I was coming off some serious heartbreak, she was coming off some other drama. So we took things slowly, but we started to develop feelings for each other.

After a couple months, I moved back to school and she moved back to work a few states over. I was hesitant to get into a long-distance relationship: I’d done it before and hated the logistics and the lack of face time, and I didn’t want to take things with her any faster than they’d been going. But we decided to stay in touch and see how things developed on their own.

Thanks for being the best group of readers a girl could ask for. And thanks to the letter writers – we really don’t do this without brave people who share their stories. Here’s the poem of the day:

Postcard from the Party

You have to be invited, and there’s nothing
you can do to be asked. Headlines and bloodlines
don’t help. It’s a long way from home but I’m
here, the view much better than I’m used to.
How did this happen? Dumb but good luck,
right place and time, the planets aligned.
No contract, no deadline, no risk. And what
did I do to deserve this? Slept with all
the wrong people, gambled too much on friends
of friends with light bulbs over their heads.
Wrote every day no matter what.

Captain Picard is on vacation and can't help you, so for now, you get us.

Today, the awesome regular commenter known as “k”has been promoted to EnsignPerception in the Army of Awkward. She will help this letter writer explore the universe of people he would like to sleep with.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I have a problem when it comes to being attracted to people. I suppose colloquially this problem would be called “low standards,” but I don’t like to think about it that way, because I don’t feel like it entails any disrespect on my part toward the people I’m attracted to. The many, many people.

The best way I can describe my feelings about intimacy is this: I basically have no friend zone. If I have a lot in common with a person and I’m reasonably certain that they won’t turn my skin into a lampshade, I find myself wanting to be intimate with them. I try to be discerning about who I actually try to initiate anything with – if I feel like they have no interest in me whatsoever, I don’t bother. But still, this results in a lot of rejection for me. The rejection itself isn’t so much the issue. I respect their right to not be attracted to me and all that. But more than being hurtful – although it is, as I imagine rejection is for anyone, always at least a little hurtful – these rejections just confuse me. Not because I think I’m awesome, but because my barriers to desiring intimacy with another person seem to be just way, way lower than they are for everybody around me. I’m just not certain what’s stopping them unless they find me physically repulsive (and in most cases, I’m pretty sure people don’t).

Dan is in his mid-twenties, has graduated from university, and has been working a steady job in his field for two or three years now. He still lives with his parents completely free of charge. He’s generally a good person, if sheltered. I’ve had to explain to him why he can’t make “she-male” jokes, why certain internet memes are racist, etc, and while he doesn’t make any effort to think critically about the media he’s consuming, at least when you point out he’s doing something offensive, he stops and doesn’t do it again.